


emperor's new clothes

by toujours_nigel



Series: Electorate [4]
Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5548085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not Diwali without Yajna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [filia_noctis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/filia_noctis/gifts).



Shekhar wakes up that morning cramping. Some women, some people, don’t keep track of their cycles, forget and are ambushed. Uma is like that, a little. Bharti, who runs their front office these days, just keeps tampons in her purse in case, because sometimes she goes months without and sometimes she has two within a fortnight of each other. Doesn’t eat right, works too late, doesn’t take her vitamin and iron supplements. Shekhar’s never been like that. 19th of every month like clock-work, four days, mild to nonexistent pain. Twenty years ago. These days the only cycle he tracks is Uma’s. Yajna when she’s at home sulks at high volume and demands chocolates and hot-water bottles and requires no tracking whatsoever. He must have pulled a muscle somehow. Forty-two in a month, not young anywhere save politics. In the bathroom mirror he looks drawn, wrinkles around the deep-set eyes, grey near the temples. Pain etched in. He spits the toothpaste foam out, rinses his mouth, caps the tube, and decides to take a bath before breakfast. It’s early yet, and the hot water will help.

Everyone is ranged around the table by the time he comes down, Dev attacking his parathas like there’s a shortage, Dhri on his phone, Babuji and Uma arguing about the number of jalebis he’s allowed to have. He pours a cup of tea and drinks it off, then pours another, adds three spoons of sugar.

“You’re on Dev duty,” he informs Dhri, sits down gingerly. Thank God for padded chairs.

“I told you not to climb around with the lights yesterday,” Dhri says, thumbs flying over his keypad. “Yajna says they’re off, she’ll keep in touch if she can, but Ajat sa’ab says the signal’s shit all the way out there so not to worry if they can’t get through. She’ll swing by for a visit on their way back.”

“I hope she gets bored and decides to come back jaldi. It’s not Diwali without the children at home,” Mai says, heaping a dish with parathas, ladling dum alu into a box. “Take this with you when you go out. Chandar and Raju have been out from six.”

“I suppose we came in with the tide, huh? It’s not Diwali without Yajna. Kuch bhi.” Dhri mutters, but he gobbles his last paratha and goes.

“You’re here all the time, when are you _gone_ to be missed?” Mai calls to his retreating back, then adds, suddenly serious, “I don’t like the thought of her being in that place.”

“Thakur sa’ab invited them,” Uma says. “I spoke to Yajna and Parth yesterday, he sounded excited.”

“Parth’s a little blind about Thakur sa’ab,” Mai says baldly, and fills a plate to give him.

“Parth phupha was in the army,” Dev observes. “He killed Pakistanis! I want to be in the army when I grow up.”

“You wanted to be a lawyer last week,” he points out, and trades an alarmed glance with Babuji. Last thing they need is for Dev to develop a fixation on Parth.

“Like Bua,” Dev says. “Isn’t Bua coming today? She said she’d do rockets with me.”

“You can do rockets with Chachu,” Uma says. “Now go take a bath. Salma’s laid out your clothes.”

“And then can I set off rockets?”

“Not till it’s dark,” Babuji says. “Budhdhhu, you can’t see them till it’s dark.”

“Fine. I’ll eat more jalebis after I’ve taken my bath.”

“We’ve got to start watching our mouths around him,” he says. “No, Mai, it’s okay, I do it all the time. It’s not just the family there anyway, lots of friends, party workers, people we know. Shyam’s going to be there.”

Mai’s face clears immediately. Dhri would joke about it, and it’s only true that Mai’s faith in Shyam borders on the ridiculous, but then so does his. He keeps his head down and eats.

 

It might not be Diwali without Yajna in Mai’s head, but you sure couldn’t tell by the house. By ten Shekhar’s popped a Hifenac and climbed two ladders, and he’s the oldest of the younger lot and not, strictly speaking, supposed to be dangling about parapets. By two the house is full of all the chachas and taus and NRI buas they only see every year or two, and Shekhar has made awkward conversation with cousins-in-law whose names he doesn’t remember and accents he refuses to try and understand, and is contemplating escape. He could manage, but Mai would kill him. She can afford to, she’s got a spare son.

That is. That is a thought he hasn’t had in twenty years and longer. It leaves him winded, like a fist into the soft belly beneath his ribs. There had been a time when he thought these things every day and took comfort in them.

“I’m sorry,” he tells the man in front of him--Rajni bua’s son, Rajiv? Rajesh? Raju who used to be shit at cricket, anyway, but always wanted to bat first--interrupting a spiel about the real estate situation in Los Angeles, “this is very interesting, but I think I just saw my son slip out. He’s fascinated by the old well, and I don’t want him to go exploring.”

He’s out and away before the guy--Ranjit, he remembers, hitting the stairs and pounding down, used to make a big deal about having nearly the same name as the trophy like that made up for a tendency to fumble catches and an inability to avoid LBWs--can formulate some sort of reply about the distressing situation of child care and negligence in India. He even ambushes Dev and distracts him from poking at the patakas laid out in the sun and commends him to Raju’s violent care before cutting around to the well. Uma doesn’t like him smoking, and he hides the evidence when he can’t resist the urge. It’s only fair.

He was fifteen when the twins were born, still answering to Shikha with a measure of content, aware of irritation and ascribing it to circumscribed gender roles. Summer before he turned sixteen he’d given his ICSE and started following Babuji on his rounds, anything to get away from the horror of being expected to take care of the infants because _you’ll be doing it in a few years, sasuraal mein kya bolenge if we don’t teach you_ even though he’d liked them well enough, could have spent hours just looking at them, had no objections to diapers and very little to vomit. He’d like it, going about with Babuji, hearing about the trouble in each constituency and ward and trying to figure out a solution, even though Mai had frowned over turning him loose, prescribed a conservative wardrobe and a low, compliant voice. They’re twenty-seven now, that’s how long he’s been playing this game. Longer than anyone his age: even Shyam had been flirting with inappropriate women at fifteen, not planning street shows and meetings in breaks between political science and history assignments.

He’d asked Shyam once, about it, said, “Fifteen, man, Subha’s fourteen now, would you ever let her do the things you or I did in another year? Dhri’s eighteen and I still don’t even like his going to school or field-trips alone, Mai doesn’t even let Yajna go if she’s not going, hell of a fight in the offing there. They let us though. Why the hell did they let us?”

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” Shyam had said, topped up both their drinks, and then, too quickly, they had both been too drunk and there had been no conversation at all. Too morbid, anyway, for such a bright time. Dev had been all of two weeks old, and he’d been missing Uma terribly, and not on good enough terms with his in-laws to invade their home indefinitely. Anyway it was traditional women to go to their maike after delivery, and he hadn’t begrudged her the convalescence. But he had been lonely, with the twins still in school and Mai and Babuji in Vellore for buaji’s operation which had been held back for Uma, and no work needed to keep the constituencies ticking along in the wake of a successful election. He’d driven up to Kesariya without finding out whether Shyam was around, and Shyam had shown up on the second day, loaded down with booze and congratulations.

In the morning while Shekhar was trying to hold his head together with both hands, Shyam had said, “I won’t let anything happen to them. They’ll be fine,” and he had nodded and believed it and fought his parents when necessary to let the twins control their own lives.

He can’t laugh at Mai’s faith in Shyam when he’d been the one to inculcate it.

All of this is rubbish and paranoia anyway. The case is won, they’re still running Parth for MP, they can flounder their way back into a stable alliance from higher ground, and the worst Dhanraj and his cohort can do today is make the day mildly unpleasant. If Shyam and Yajna play their cards right Pawan might punch someone.

He finishes his cigarette and chucks the butt in through the netted cover on the well. Stay out too long and there’ll be a search party.

 

“Ask people to lunch and they stay through tea and angle for dinner,” Uma says at eight, when the last car has driven off. Babuji isn’t terribly happy about it, but with the state of his heart they can’t do all-night revelry like it’s still five years ago. Between immediate family and old retainers there’s still fifteen people around, but that’s paltry compared to the sixty odd from earlier years.

“Well, at least Dev had an admiring audience,” he says, and Uma laughs. The ooohing and aahing from Amreeki cousins had at least distracted him from the absence of _Bua, and Parth Phupha, and Pawan Phupha, and Satyaachachi, and Shyamchachu, and Vasu tauji, and and and_ Last year Yajna and Parth and that lot had been around and raucous, and Shyam and Satyaa had ditched his parents and arrived at midnight with Chandrabhan sleeping in the back-seat and hauled Dev up and out of bed to let off rockets in the bitter cold. This year, they’re elsewhere. Parties change as parties change.

Shekhar surveys the abundant littering, and says, “Darling, my back’s acting up,” and beats a retreat. Some days it is excellent to be a man. And rich, to be fair, but Uma and Mai have to supervise and linger and ensure everyone is well-fed and content. Babuji is shut in his study with Rahim chacha and Bundela sa’ab, and Shekhar ought by rights put in an appearance. Above and beyond the necessities of work, he likes Bundela sa’ab. But it is a day full of memories and there was a year there when he couldn’t look at the man and his back does hurt now the pill’s worn off and it is Diwali, after all.

The justifications carry him all the way up the stairs, and the cosiness of his bedroom accomplishes the rest. His last waking thought is of the strangeness of remembering the day he had always started bleeding on the day he had always started bleeding.

When he wakes the room is pitch-dark. Someone has come by and pulled the door to, cutting off the shaft of light from the corridor. For a moment he’s unsure what woke him, and then his phone starts ringing again. Shyam.

Over his hullo Shyam says, “Call whoever is at gate duty and have them open up. If I get stopped today I’m not answerable for the consequences. And make sure your parents are asleep. Yes, nearly there, hold on. I mean it, Shekhar, they’d best be asleep and the gate’d best be open.”

The call clicks off, and the lock screen of his phone announces that it’s coming on midnight. He’s followed stranger orders from Shyam and taken no harm. He distracts Chandar from his gambling and relays instructions before going back downstairs.

Uma looks up from her phone and says, “I was just about to come wake you. Go get Dhri, I’ll have dinner on the table in five minutes.”

“You might as well hold it a bit longer. Shyam called and asked to get the gates opened. Where’s Babuji?”

“Had a sorbitrate and went to bed. I guess Yajna couldn’t stand the place anymore, huh? Well, Mai will be happy at least.”

“Don’t wake her up. Get Dhri and make sure Dev’s asleep. I’m going outside to wait.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and holds himself very still to avoid going up to her, embracing her to ward off confusion. Somebody will be about the place, somebody always is. He can’t abide giggling. He is afraid she will catch fear from him. “Shyam sounded angry. That’s rare.”

“Maybe he’s just drunk,” she suggests, believing it as little as him, and rises from the sofa, puts her phone into a pocket. She’s changed into a t-shirt and track pants sometime in the four hours while he slept. “I’ll get Dhri.”

“Don’t wake Dev,” he urges, and she throws him a contemptuous look and goes.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s a cold night. 19th October in a small town in Uttar Pradesh, what the hell else could it be. It’s not a patch on November, but he feels the wind clearly through his clothes. His hands are freezing.

The whole house is lit up for Diwali, or the swinging headlights would have looked significantly more dramatic. As it is he watches the car fairly bolt up the driveway and come to a standstill at the foot of the stairs, all before he’s finished descending the stairs. If the gates had been locked there’d have been a collision. Shyam driving, by the style even if Shekhar hadn’t recognised the Hyundai i20: Yajna can be just as fast if she chooses, but she’d have ended in an accident for sure.

The driver’s door opens and Shyam climbs out, walks around to the passenger’s side and hands Yajna down. His forearms are drawn taut, the tendons flaring and visible in the light from the house. Shekhar can see all of this very clearly because Shyam, against the weather, is clad in an undershirt and pajamas. Yajna, stepping down from the car, clasping Shyam’s wrist like it’s keeping her upright, is wearing his sherwani over her petticoat.

By the time his vision clears they have come up the steps, foot by careful foot, till they are level with him. When he reaches for Yajna, Shyam snarls, puts his body between them.

Shekhar, stung to the quick and terrified, says, “She’s my sister!”’

Shyam blinks, shakes his head to clear it, steps back.

Yajna, seen so close, is terrifying. Her hair has tumbled loose, and her face is set in a parody of calm. There is a scrape on her forehead, angling down from her scalp, as though she’s been dragged or struck.

“Go in,” Shekhar says, stops and tries for calm. “Uma and Dhri are the only ones around.”

“Manage Ajaat,” Shyam mutters, and they go on past him. He turns to watch, ignoring the sounds of car doors opening. So slow, so slow, and Yajna still has the bounce in her step that goes with youth. So slow, and in the golden light wrapped around the house there is blood on the steps.

His sister. His little sister. When he had been growing up he had been afraid of this, he had been too strange, too uppity, too much of a target for someone who wanted to put freaks in their place. Yajna has always been everyone’s darling.

Ajaat says, “They didn’t fuck her. It’s not from that.”

Ajaat looks like he’s been in a fight, pupils blown, swaying on his feet and leaning heavily on Parth. Parth--well, Shekhar’s seen him actually home from the wars and he’s looked better.

He thinks _Did you watch closely to make sure?_ and pushes it away. He doesn’t want just yet to know the answer. Instead he says, “You’d better come in.”

“Bhaiyya’s drunk,” Parth says. “He couldn’t have done anything to stop it.”

Something of his horror, then, must have got through. Well, Parth’s a smart boy. “That’s okay,” he says. “Do you need help with him?”

Parth shakes his head and shoulders Ajaat, and Ajaat, credit where due, can walk on his own, just needs a little help steering, so Shekhar stands and watches and swings around to follow them up.

Going in he’s afraid that Babuji or Mai or both will be waiting, but it’s past midnight now and they had a full day and they’re old: Babuji is seventy-odd and has a heart condition, Mai is sixty-seven. It’s just Uma and Dhri, on the sofa with Yajna between them, Dhri holding her hands. They look, they all look, like they could break. Shekhar feels it in himself, the dangerous brittleness that could any moment explode into violence. Shyam is absent and he feels lighter for it, it would be too easy to catch rage from Shyam, and someone has to stay normal.

He says, “Have any of you had dinner?” They might have. The way Shyam was driving, they might have left well after ten.

Ajaat says, “A liquid one.” He picks his way across the room to the armchair furthest from Yajna, and sinks into it, Parth following to sit on the arm, standing guard.

“We’ll get something solid into you, you’ll feel better,” Uma says. “Is anyone else coming?”

“Pawan Bhaiyya and Hiru,” Parth volunteers. “We started together but they couldn’t keep up. They should be along in some time. A half-hour or so.”

“That’s enough time for you three to wash up,” Uma says. “Come on, Yajna, I’ll run you a bath. Dhri, can you show Ajaat up to your room? Shekhar, Shyam went up to yours. We’ll reconvene for dinner when we’re done and the others reach.”

They get Yajna and Ajaat up and off, Yajna up the stairs to Shekhar’s suite, Ajaat down the corridor and across the courtyard to Dhri’s. Shekhar stares at Parth who stares back.

“I’ve got to tell the boys at the gate to let Pawan in,” Shekhar explains. “You can give me the sitrep if you want, but in a minute.”

“They were fine in the car,” Parth says, and Shekhar nods and holds up a hand to stall him, texting furiously. He doesn’t trust his voice right now. When he lowers it and nods acquiescence, Parth says, “They were fine in the car, they were making wonderfully detailed plans.”

Planning is how Yajna copes with distress. Shyam’s the one who taught her that strategy. Ajaat’s a lawyer and hobby philosopher. Shekhar can’t say he’s surprised. He says instead, holding his voice steady with effort, “I meant at Thakur Sa’ab’s home.”

“We went there, they handed over the papers, we sat around and drank and played poker. At some point Dhanraj and Bhaiyya started gambling, and he started losing. He lost a lot of money. Pawan Bhaiyya wasn’t around, had had a fight with Sushen and gone outside to cool off. I went to fetch him and by the time I found him and got back Shyam and Yajna and Bhaiyya were coming out after us. Pawan Bhaiyya went back in to fetch Hiru while Shyam and I got Bhaiyya and Yajna to his car. Then we drove here.”

“They were the way they got here? Dressed this way?”

“Yes.”

“How long would you say you were gone?”

“I don’t know,” Parth says, scrubs his hands over his face, becomes human. “I don’t know. A while. I was fairly drunk. It took me some time to find Pawan Bhaiyya. The grounds are extensive. I hadn’t been there in a while. Thirty minutes at most. Probably less. I want to kill them.”

A thoroughly unfair part of him wants to point out that Parth had his chance and clearly didn’t use it. He says, “If you want to get changed you’re about the same size as Dhri. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go scrounge up something for Ajaat.”

They aren’t close to the same size, but Shyam is in the habit of forgetting his clothes at the house, and something might be suitable there. There’s also the matter of Shyam, who will be cold now the adrenaline has dropped and is too stubborn at the best of times to admit as much. Mostly he wants an excuse to look in on Yajna.

 

Shyam is sitting on the edge of his bed with bloodied knuckles. Shekhar’s bed that he shares with Uma barring quarrels and migraines, not the bed Shyam habitually occupies two rooms down and to the left, that used to be Shekhar’s study and then was briefly Uma’s studio before she shifted to the attic in search of better light. He’s left books there over the years, and clothes when he’s been in too much of a hurry to await laundering, and brought himself unerringly to Shekhar’s bedroom, to sit on Uma’s side of the bed. Well, none of them are likely to get any sleep in any case.

“Uma’s taken Yajna for a bath,” he says to the back of Shyam’s head. “Do I need to go stop them?”

Shyam shakes his head, turns a little to look at him. “It didn’t get that far.”

“Ajaat said the same thing, but I thought he might have been too drunk to know.”

“It didn’t get that far,” Shyam says, and turns away, drops his head.

He wants to shake him by the shoulders and scream that it isn’t Shyam’s sister who got raped, or close enough for government work, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. Shyam was, Shyam got her out and away. If it had been Subha, if it had been Satyaa, he would have been every bit this broken.

He says, “I’ll come back in a while. Wash your hand out, there’s Dettol in the bathroom.”

Uma and Yajna are two rooms down and to the left. The quiet murmur resolves itself into Uma singing and Yajna with her head in Uma’s lap. They look up when he comes in, and Yajna tries to sit up.

“I’m here for Shyam’s clothes,” he tells her, and goes to rummage in the drawers, takes out two of everything. He can catch Dhri and make him loan Parth a t-shirt and pajamas. Pawan will be a problem, but maybe they can find something of Babuji’s awaiting sorting. “That said, you should go take a bath, chutki.”

“Water’s freezing,” Uma explains. “I just turned the geyser on.”

“Catch a cold, huh?” There is space enough on the bed for him to sit down beside them, and Yajna looks so young, so bird-boned and fragile that he wants to grip her tight, hold her till he has swallowed her whole, one flesh so he can keep her safe. If she never wants another man to lay a hand on her he’ll find a way to enforce that. If she wants blood for this night he’ll find a way to enforce that. If this is what Babuji had felt when he was coming home bruised and humiliated he doesn’t blame him any more, for anything. He sits down because his legs refuse to hold him up, and puts a hand on Yajna’s ankle jutting out from under the meddy hem of her petticoat. She doesn’t flinch away, and something in his chest eases. He takes her feet in his hands and rubs out the pain, thumbs digging into the high arches.

In a while Uma says, “Shekhar’s right. The water should be warm enough now. Come along, just a quick wash.”

Yajna says, “Yes I suppose so. Thank you, Bhabhi, I can manage,” and swings upright.

Uma stands with her and takes her to the bathroom regardless, and comes back to slump beside him, shoulder to shoulder. “I was stalling till you found out whether she’d be washing away evidence.”

“Shyam says no,” he answers, and curls an arm around her, kisses her hair. It’s gone a little greasy after hours in the kitchen and hours mingling. Sometimes he’s proudest of this in his life, that he’s married this woman. “You’ll sleep here tonight?”

“I can’t tell whether that’s a question or a command,” she says. “But yeah, I’d planned on it. She’s pretty out of it and I’m not sure waking up to a man next to her will help, first minute or so. You know how she wakes.”

Yajna spends the first thirty minutes of her waking hours a zombie in search of coffee or alternately human brains. If she doesn’t recognise them, if she flinches, if she screams, he and Dhri will be in lock-up on murder charges by nightfall. They’re not progressive enough to have Shyam sleep beside her with her husband in the house. “I have to decide where to put Parth,” he lies. “Shyam’s fairly out of it, so I don’t want to move him. I’ll talk to Dhri and see what can be done.”

“You have to stay with Shyam unless you want to wake up to Parth or Ajaat’s corpse,” Uma says and from somewhere finds a smile. “Now there’s a thought.”

“Tempting,” he allows, and kisses her lightly. “Thank you. Dhri can have Ajaat, man looks about to kill himself, he needs a watch. I’ll get these distributed and come back.”

He knocks on the bathroom door back in his room and lays out a set of clothing on the bed, takes two shawls out of the almirah and adds one. He pockets Shyam’s phone and his own before he leaves the room.

A car pulls up, and feet rampage up the stairs and into the house, and a stentorian voice begins upbraiding Ajaat. Pawan has arrived. If they’re not careful they’ll wake Babuji. He takes the stairs two at a time.

“Let him wake!” Pawan shouts when he points this out as calmly as he can. “Why _isn’t_ he awake? After what happened to Yajna today, what this little shit allowed to happen! Bhaiyya you’ve been dealing with those haramzadaas since you were twelve, and you got drunk and you lost control? Alcoholic chut!”

He lunges at Ajaat, and Dhri and Parth have to work to hold him back. Hiru is sitting in an armchair and ignoring everyone. She resembles nobody at this moment as much as Shyam, carved black stone, ebony, iron, everything shut away. He doesn’t want to be around when the storm breaks.

“Don’t you care?” Pawan asks, the bellow gone from his voice.

“I care about not landing my father, who is seventy-three and has a heart condition, in the hospital,” Shekhar says. “Dhri, let go of him. Pawan, sit down.”

Pawan sits down, much as a volcano might decide not to explode. Still brimming with volatile potential, barely dormant. Dev hasn’t finished his Geography lab copy and it’s due in a week.

“Yajna is my sister,” he says, because apparently it bears reminding. “Of course I care. But we can’t rush off and kill anyone, and I want Yajna to tell me what happened, and I want Ajaat sober for it, and I want Shyam more than an inch away from coma or nervous collapse. So we will wait until morning, and not complicate things by giving Babuji a heart attack. Ajaat, you’re sleeping in Dhri’s room, you need an eye on you. Parth. Yeah, Hiru?”

“Pawan and I would like to see her.”

At least she’s talking. More than he can say for Shyam. They go up in single file, all three of them, and peer through the open door. Yajna’s lying still and quiet, and Uma’s ignoring her in favour of a book. She looks up, conscious of their gaze, and comes out pulling the door to.

“Came out of her bath and fell into bed,” she explains. “Hi, Hiru. We’ve been holding dinner for you. Shekhar, you can bring up a tray for Shyam. I’ll eat and bring something up for Yajna, I don’t want to wake her just yet, she just dropped off.”

 

Shyam looks at the food with a sort of savage indifference and turns away.

“You need to eat,” Shekhar says, but puts the tray on the dresser and comes to sit beside him on the bed. If Shyam wants to eat food gone cold and congealed that’s entirely his decision. “She’s asleep. Uma and Hiru are staying with her. Satyaa will drive out with Prithaji tomorrow, I called her. Here’s your phone.”

“You don’t have Satyaa’s new number,” Shyam surmises, and takes it back

“She changes SIM cards like shoes,” he complains and is beginning to work up a joke.

“Chucks the ones with death-threats and starts anew,” Shyam explains, and, well, it was going to be a terrible joke anyway.

“We’re waiting for them to get here before we decide on anything,” he says. “Give me a minute, I’ll just get out of these clothes.”

He’d gone to sleep in his sherwani in the evening and it’s a mass of creases. His t-shirt is a wonderful change after that, cool and light. He lets the tap run for five minutes and tries to talk himself into some semblance of normalcy.

When he emerges Shyam says, “I’ve failed you. I’ve failed her.”

Shekhar spares a moment of grief for his plan to leave everything till tomorrow, but the frequent derailing and the complete and general failure of obedience has succeeded only in making him angry. He has been a father lo these nine years, an older brother twenty-seven. He likes his orders _followed_. He leans against the wall and asks, “How?”

Shyam laughs. “You have to ask?”

“You got her home,” Shekhar says, crosses the room to flick off the lights, pads back and climbs into bed. “I wouldn’t categorise that as a failure.”

“She got assaulted.”

“Not your fault.”

“She nearly got raped. Sushen had her bare to the waist and he was working on her petticoat. He had his mouth on her breast. I had to drag him off.”

Shekhar feels it like a punch to the throat, like someone has taken out his lungs with a blunt knife. His sister. His Yajna. Yajna the light of this house. “Stop.”

“She’s beautiful,” Shyam says. The curtains aren’t fully drawn. Starlight and bright pollution creep in and limn his profile. He looks monstrous. “Not too tall, neither too short, deep waist flaring out to her hips, well-shaped high breasts, that long neck.”

Shekhar is on him before he knows what he’s doing, desperate to shut him up. Shyam goes easily, lets Shekhar pin him down, refuses the hand on his mouth, the forearm on his throat, clasps Shekhar by the wrists and pulls him further down until they are mouth to ear, Shyam’s breath stirring his hair, sending his skin shivering.

“I kept getting caught up in conversations every time I tried to get to Ajaat. Everyone had so much to say to me, from Thakur sa’ab on down. I kept hearing laughter so I thought it couldn’t be anything bad. Yajna was with me and Parth most of the time, but then she got bored and went to look for Ajaat. She’s been sitting in on card games here since she was ten, so what harm could there be? Parth went to look for Pawan. The laughter had died down by the time I’d managed to get away from ek aur baat Shyam bete, and down in the hall they were all staring at one thing. Do you remember all those men, all the boys who used to hang about her before she got married, hoping? All of them got a glimpse today. Sushen even got a taste. His teeth were in her flesh, I think he drew blood. I think I broke his jaw, getting him away, and then he just stood there laughing. Vasu Khateek, he asked me if I wanted a share, and to get in line.”

“Mercy,” he whispers. “Shyam. Stop. Stop it!”

Shyam laughs, noses against his ear. “Still not my fault?”

As evenly as he can manage, he asks, “Did you get in line?” Shyam rears back in unfeigned horror, and Shekhar drags up a smile, puts a hand on his cheek, says, “I think you’re absolved. Ajaat was there too, even if Parth and Pawan weren’t. You’re the only one who did anything.”

“Ajaat was too drunk to stand.”

“Not precisely a point in his favour. Shyam, you got her home. You got her away from those bastards before they could rape her. This is not a failure.”

“He asked if I wanted a turn with her,” Shyam hisses. “A turn. I’ve known her since she was three and I could pick her up one-handed. I’ve played horse for her and dolls with her and had clay cakes in her tea-parties. She used to call me when she was feeling particularly scolded and I’ve put dates and political meetings on hold to talk her through trigonometry. She came to me when she started dating seriously because she knew you’d blow a fuse. Those miserable drunken bastards, they put their eyes on her and their hands on her and they asked me if I _wanted a turn_.”

Shekhar pulls him closer, tighter, because Shyam can’t look up at him and he wants to put away that necessity entirely, and strokes a hand through his curls, turns them a little so his weight rests on the bed rather than on Shyam, and waits to hear the grief beneath the vitriol.

“When I reached for her,” Shyam says after a long enough silence that Shekhar’s begun to doze a little, “when I touched her she flinched from me. I didn’t let her. I took off my kurta and gave it to her, and she stood there with every inch of her repulsed by my touch and I still lay hands on her. I had to, she was in shock and Ajaat was staggering and I had to get them away. Forty-two years old, and the first time a woman flinches from me it’s Yajna. I’d gut myself before I hurt her.”

“She wasn’t seeing you.”

“She was,” Shyam says with a sort of dead finality. “She heard Khateek and thought it was true. My darling Sakhi, flinching away from me. I couldn’t love my little sister more. I don’t.” He laughs a little. “You were the first man who flinched away. Maybe I’m just repulsive to the Panchals.”

“All evidence does point that way,” Shekhar says, and kisses his forehead. “I shouldn’t recommend making a pass at Dhri to make sure. Eat something, will you, or you’ll do a Victorian maiden act and swoon away.”

In the end Shyam devours the whole tray in roughly ten minutes and refuses to look shame-faced about it. Shekhar leaves to put the tray away and slips down the corridor to watch Yajna sleeping. Pawan has commandeered a chair and dragged it to the wall and is keeping watch over the three blanketed lumps in the bed that will wake and become Hiru and Yajna and Uma. It takes him ten minutes to persuade him to go downstairs and commandeer Dhri’s spare bed, and by then his feet are dragging.

At the head of the stairs, just before he can lock himself in and away from everyone for a few hours--except Shyam, but Shyam has been dealt with and hardly counts--Dhri catches hold of him. “What?”

“Parth’s still moping around in the living room, where do I put him?”

“Anywhere,” Shekhar says, “just not in Babuji’s wing. Anywhere with a bed and a door that closes. But make sure Ajaat sleeps and doesn’t try to run away. Tell him Shyam has plans for him.”

Dhri grins. “Yeah. That sounds alright. You go to sleep, Bhaisa’ab, I’ll deal with it.”


	3. Chapter 3

The table is full today: Babuji at the head flanked by Dhri and Ajaat; Yajna at the foot of the table with three empty chairs between her and Parth; Uma and Hiru on her other side distracting Mai from the absorbing task of filling plates by asking her for recipes. Pawan, seemingly absorbed in his conversation with Dhri and Babuji, reaches out a long arm and steals the cup of tea steaming unattended in front of Parth and returns it after a sip. When Prithaji and Satyaa reach they’ll have to turf someone or drag over another chair.

He routes over to the tea-pot, fills two cups and fixes one with four sugars, pins Shyam with a glare. “I’m not sitting beside Parth.”

“No,” Shyam says, takes the cup from him and drinks deep. “He needs handling. That trick of Dhri’s wasn’t smart. Do I have to always do everything myself?”

He had woken with Uma and Shyam strategising with his body between them, running hands over his hair and shoulder and side as punctuation and emphasis. For a moment it could have been that first halcyon year of their marriages, and Satyaa just out of sight and on the phone with her editor or a source. Then he had woken the entire way and the last seventeen years, the last eight hours, had come crashing down. In the shower he took in lieu of forbidden coffee he had fantasised determinedly about the vacation he would take with Uma and Dev once Parth had contested elections and they could spare him for a while. They could go down to Kerala, furthest away without crossing international borders, and switch off their phones, and rent a houseboat to float around on the back-waters, and visit temples, and buy silks and gold, and ride elephants, and watch the martial dance he couldn’t pronounce, and eat beef if he maintained a low enough profile. He could sun himself on beaches while Uma sketched and Dev paddled in the shadows: they would be anonymous and nobody would wonder at his scars. Or there would be, he’d thought, shutting off the water and returning to reality, some emergency or sustained crisis and he’d end up giving his tickets to Yajna or Satyaa or even the girl Shyam had taken up with recently whose name he could never remember, who wanted nothing to do with his career and had ended in becoming a housewife for not just Shyam, but Satyaa, who loved her wildly. What was her name, pretty little thing, a bit younger than Yajna. Rukmini. They could make a hen party of it. Someone needed a vacation, and he was used to living vicariously.

Dhri and Pawan, at the table, are making plans that seem increasingly adapted from 80s Bollywood action films. Babuji looks like he’s holding off an impending stroke with pure will. He’s had his first dose of sorbitrate already: Shekhar had gone in to tell him with the pills in his pocket. Another episode so soon after might tip him over, and while any publicity (MP Dhrupad Panchal has a heart-attack upon hearing of sexual assault on daughter, page 6) is excellent Shekhar prefers, by and large, to be in nominal control of the explosions.

He finishes his tea, put his hand, warm, on Yajna’s taut wrist, and says, “Do we have anything going that doesn’t rely on delusions of living in _Gangs of Wasseypur_? Shyam?”

Shyam glares like he’s come in a crucial beat too early. “We’ll wait for Bua and Satyaa before finalising details, but obviously we begin with a press release.”

Everyone nods, Mai a little tight around the eyes, and Ajaat still suicidal, though that could be the hang-over, and Dhri muttering that his had been viable plans.

Parth looks from one to the other of them, eyes wide and staring. “We aren’t telling anyone! Dadaji and I have been discussing how to keep it quiet. Are all of you mad?”

In the silence Uma says, “Well, if we’re living in _Harry Potter_ , I feel cheated of my wand. Jamayiji, are you going to erase the memory of fifty-odd people? Your wife’s fairly unforgettable.”

“Fifty?”

“Thereabouts,” Ajaat says. “Perhaps a few more. Yajna?”

She looks at Ajaat all serene, eats a thoughtful quarter of an orange. “Closer to sixty, all told, if we’re counting the servants. About five primarily focused on us, but only Khateek and Sushen actually laid hands.”

“I shouldn’t think bribery or intimidation should hold that many tongues,” Shyam says. “Not when it’s this sort of story. You see that, don’t you Parth?”

“Dadaji made it sound like there were barely any people around. Just Khateek.”

“Thakur sa’ab wasn’t there,” Yajna points out. “I’m sure he got the euphemised version of the story. Parth, don’t you believe me?”

“I do,” Parth says, and that’s sincerity in his voice, at least. “I do, and I know something terrible happened and I wish I could murder Khateek, but nobody’s briefed me.”

“You’re right,” Yajna says, and dips her eyelashes, trembling, and looks up again. “I’m sorry, this is all too much, Parth, I… if you think I should, I’ll talk to them. But can we… do you think we could wait for Mummyji? It’s silly, but… I need the support.”

Parth lights up, blind to the horror on Babuji’s face, or misattributing it, and says, “Of course. We’ll go sit in your room till Mum arrives, you need the rest.”

Yajna goes with him. She lets him help her rise and leans into him and Parth straightens up just that fraction, responds to her cues and struts a little, easier in his skin than Shekhar’s seen him all this while. They make a very pretty picture.

To their retreating backs Hiru says, “I’d ask what you were thinking sending that boy into the military, but I’m sure it was some nonsense about patriotism.”

“Mostly we were thinking the peace and quiet was nice and it was a pity we couldn’t send Pawan as well,” Ajaat temporises and gets up and out of his seat. “Babuji, Aunty, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see how far out Mum is, she hates driving in the morning.”

Time. The trouble is time, too young and too old and too absent. In ’95, when he was twenty and avoiding marriage, Yajna had been five and oblivious, Ajaat fifteen and terrified, and Parth, ten and fresh out from grieving his father, had been in Chail becoming a good little soldier. Twenty years, while they were twisting blood into kinship, Parth has been a glorious stranger. The first time they had a conversation was at his engagement to Yajna. He worships the ground Ajaat walks on, clear enough, and idolises Shyam, but home for Parth is the old house in roaring summer, and the old man in it, not the house in Hauz Khas and not Ajaat’s offices in Mathura Road and not Pawan’s restaurant in Khan Market and the organic store Hiru and the twins run out of the back. Day by day, year by year, Shekhar is more Ajaat’s brother than Parth has had the chance to be. Day by day it passes off well enough, but now in the grind when it matters they are all strangers, acquaintances of three years standing, where he has drunk deep with Ajaat and suffered lectures on tribal rights from Hiru and been dragged in the twins’ enthusiastic wake through Lal Kuan Bazar. Day by day, you build up trust, and the man Parth has loved all his life with an open heart has been telling him all numbing night that no irreconcilable rift has opened between them. And he’s not as easily led now, three years out from military service and two years into campaigning, as he was newly cut-away from a benevolent tyrant and hoping wildly to find another. In the last two years Parth has learnt to think better of himself, to expect a certain amount of courtesy and kow-towing. Shyam was right, he needs handling.

He gets up and taps Dhri and they go out, across the front rooms still empty for Diwali and around the house to the well.

“We’ve got to bring him over,” he says, and

Dhri says, “His wife gets molested and he needs to be briefed. Chut.”

“He trusts Thakur Sa’ab. No reason not to. We’ve been treating him like he’s Ajaat or the twins or Vasuki and he’s not. He’s got to be handled. If he goes against us we’re dead in the water.”

Dhri goes silent, nudges at a pebble with his foot, then kicks it away. “You think he’ll deny it?”

“No. Can’t do it, don’t think he’ll want to do it. But he’ll want it quiet, any rate.”

“Because of Thakur Sa’ab,” Dhri says. “Chut.”

“Because his wife just got molested and he wants her to have privacy and time to recover in silence and care. Ten to one he’s offering to take Yajna on a vacation so they can get past this right now.”

“She’ll beat his head in,” Dhri says meditatively. “Shyam can handle it, can’t he?”

They have so much faith in Shyam. Some day it might be too much. Some day they’ll put themselves in his hands and be bought and sold. Not spent unnecessarily, he hopes, but put to the service of some greater goal. But spent. He’s too old for this sort of thought, but he feels all of twenty, and terrified.

“I always thought,” he says, half to himself, “that I’d be the one raped. All my strategies are out of date.” Dhri stares at him, the lit matchstick flaring against his thumb and burning out, and Shekhar tries, he does, not to let on about his life before, but he has been twenty in his mind all day, and he remembers Shyam saying _I have too much planned to ruin you so early_ , and he remembers Shyam’s face monstrous in the light, and Shyam’s guilty eyes and gentle hands, and this is, and to think it turns his stomach, but this is exceedingly well-timed and he has known, he has always known, that something broke in Shyam too well to be mended.

 

Prithaji arrives at noon. Satyaa, parking the car, goes in a petrichor cloud to give chocolates to Dev and laddus to Mai and liqueur chocolates to Uma and Hiru. Shyam, still closeted with Babuji and Ajaat, comes out once for a jug of water and stays locked in Satyaa’s arms, shudders while everyone looks away. He sends Dhri to round everyone up, sits solicitous at Babuji’s elbow and watches. Their long night of horror is done, now up and on. They aren’t normal people and it is time to stop pretending.

If it had been me, Shekhar thinks, this too-long imagined thing too long put away, but if it had been him they would have put it away, put him away, left him dead or for dead. 1995, your laundiya who wants to be a boy, freak freak _freak_ , put her in her place. At best he would have been married to a coerced rapist. It would have been inconvenient, ignored, an obscene scrawl on a monument: nothing unexpected. All his strategies are out of date, out of time. Yajna is a woman in a braver world, and hers is a better story.

Pritha Yadav, in Shekhar’s long-distant childhood, was a distant figure who met infrequently with his father in her professional avatar of relentless journo, and smiled glassily at the rare gatherings which she had been obliged to attend. Before Shyam struck up with him they weren’t all so helplessly entangled, met rarely or not at all. Now after Yajna and truthfully for some years before the wedding he has been on amiable, if never intimate, terms with her. But--perhaps because of the remaining distance and perhaps because Shekhar has been twenty all day--he looks to her for that remembered pair of coolly discerning eyes. They are nowhere in evidence. Prithaji, white with anger, age harsh on her skin, knots her hands together and asks, “Have they responded?”

“Dadaji says they’ll accept whatever punishment Yajna thinks fit,” Parth offers, seems oblivious to Yajna stiffening up, pushes a cord into the HDMI slot and takes it out again, frowns at Dhri hovering at his shoulder.

“Did he? Well, that’s good. Satyaa, I’ll call around, you do the same, we’ll have the release ready to go tomorrow morning. Dhrupad Sa’ab, anybody you want involved?”

“I’ll leave it to the journalists,” Babuji says, and sags a little in his seat, takes the water Shekhar offers and fumbles the first sip. _If it had been me_ , Shekhar thinks again, treacherously, and forces the thought away.

Prithaji nods acknowledgment and fixes her lambent eyes again on Yajna. “You’re certain you want to do this, talk to them?”

They are all gathered behind the locked doors of Babuji’s study, and Yajna still looks small in his chair, behind his enormous desk, facing the flat-screen TV Parth is fiddling with. She looks small and then she lifts her chin and says, “I don’t want to talk to those men after what they did, to any of them. But Thakur Sa’ab was always kind to me and he wasn’t there, and I want to know what he thinks of this. I deserve to know.”

“In any story worth its salt the screen would spring to life and Skype automatically connect the moment Yajna finished saying that,” Hiru mutters to Pawan.

It doesn’t. They fiddle for another ten minutes with the connection. Mai leaves the room, citing impolite rage. Dhri shunts Parth away and takes charge. Shyam confers with Babuji and Pawan. Ajaat looks like he wants to go around back, wrench the cover off the old well, and fling himself in. Uma makes desultory conversation with Prithaji and Satyaa. Hiru watches Yajna.

Shekhar smokes through his pack of cigarettes with his back to the room and his head half out the window. Real life, it has a way of taking over, like a river seeping in through an inexpert dam. Last night his sister got assaulted in her sasural and today they are talking it over rationally. Soon Mai will have to go from wherever she’s seeking solace down to the kitchen to oversee Mukta kaki. He should go check on Dev, if this takes any longer: he’s gone off with Salma and Chandar, and is probably having the time of his life, but it doesn’t do to let children run wild. Look at Shyam. When the screen lights up and the call connects, dissolves from pixels into Rashtrasen Chakravarty frowning nearsightedly at them, Shekhar has stubbed out his sixth cigarette and is contemplating running upstairs for a fresh pack.

Rashtra Sa’ab says, “Bitiya I am so sorry for what happened to you. There are no excuses,” and starts making excuses. It was dark and the men were drunk and they hadn’t expected a bahu there and they were drunk and they lost their heads because Yajna is so beautiful and they were drunk and thank bhagwan nothing irrevocable happened and they were drunk and if Yajna can find it in her heart to forgive them not that they ought to be forgiven but because it would ease the heart of a man who is old enough to be her father and has always thought of her as his daughter and is ashamed, so ashamed, of the actions of his sons, though Yajna is so beautiful and they were drunk and it was dark and they were drunk. Rewind and replay, still stuck in the era of cassettes.

By the end of his spiel Shekhar has had Dhri palm Babuji a second dose of sorbitrate. Parth looks murderous, and Pawan roughly as though he wants to rip into the screen with bare hands.

Yajna nods a little. She has her lawyer face on, the one that’s been in embryo for running on a decade longer than she’s been practicising. “So you think they were justified,” she concludes, and smiles when Rashtra Sa’ab splutters. “Don’t worry, I won’t be pressing charges. Thank you for your testimony.”

“You are very kind to us, bitiya,” he tries, and Yajna.

Yajna laughs, shakes her head, her loose hair flying. “No. They just didn’t manage to rape me. It wasn’t dark, it was perfectly well lit. The men involved knew exactly who I was, they didn’t think I was some rendi they could slip a little extra later. That’s two of your excuses down, and they were flimsy to start with. Dhanraj held Ajaat Sa’ab immobile, not that it needed much doing after all the alcohol they poured down his throat. Sushen disrobed and molested me. There were any number of people in that hall, and none of them moved to arrest proceedings until Shyam showed up. After we left a car tailed us out of the estate and down the road several kilometers. Ajaat Sa’ab and Parth kept getting calls that they didn’t receive and texts to the effect that they should return and resume the games they had left mid-way. None of this particularly connotes a crime of passion to me, and you’ll find that even those are prosecuted. I do want to know,” she draws breath and shudders it out. “I do want to know one thing. My eyes are better than yours, Rashtra Sa’ab, and I can see all the buzurg in the room gathered to support you. My question is to all of you. Do you think, Thakur Sa’ab, Bharadwaj Uncle, Vikas Babu, that such a thing should have happened? Word must have spread fast enough, why did none of you rush to stop it? A woman in her monthlies, dragged by her hair bharey mehfil mein, disrobed and pawed at. Did you think it was _justified_?”

“Beti,” Thakur Sa’ab says, “humari majburi ko samjho. I have sworn to nev…”

Yajna disconnects the call, logs out, slams the laptop lid shut. She is composed to the casual eye, but her face is drawn tight, taut, and her pugnacious jaw is extended.

Into the silence, Uma asks, “Was he there?”

“Would it make a difference?” Pawan shrugs, reaches out one long arm and presses it, hard, down on Yajna’s hand trembling on the desk, strokes her wrist with his thumb till she stills. “Buddha sirf betey ke pyar mein hi andha nahin.”

“He knew a lot about Yajna’s pulchritude for a blind old man,” Satyaa observes and shudders delicately.

“Sanju must have relayed it,” Ajaat says. “He was sitting at my shoulder watching me lose. I should never have played. Yajna I’m so sorry.”

“I know getting fleeced for Diwali is traditional for you people,” Hiru says, “but I wasn’t informed it was usual to lose the estate you’ve spent the last six months fighting for, or to be drunk enough you can’t see.”

“I could see,” Ajaat says. “Well enough, unfortunately. I had six pegs. I counted. Potent stuff. Nothing remotely provable, and I doubt standing up in court and saying _My name is Ajaatshatru and I’m an alcoholic_ would really help matters.”

“We’re not going to court,” Parth says reflexively, and takes stock of the faces around him. “Are we?”

“We could. It’s Yajna’s decision,” Prithaji says. “But, and I might be biased, if we take it to court we can’t talk about it to the media, and I believe the case would just get buried.”

Ajaat and Yajna nod simultaneously, and Yajna adds, “They’d get off too easy.” There’s his girl, beautiful with the light of revenge in her eyes. She looks, with her hair loose and her dark skin flushed, like she could sit for a violent portrait of Kali. “I want to wash my hair with Sushen’s blood.”

“You will,” Pawan promises easily, like they’re discussing a dinner outing. “I’ll rip it from him and bring it to you warm. I’m putting Dhanraj in the hospital. I’ll smash his femur bare-handed if I need to.” Pawan could. Nobody moves to contradict him.

“I wish I could kill Khateek,” Parth says. “But I can’t do that, and you can’t either. Be reasonable, Bhai. We can’t lose our heads. What happened to Yajna was terrible, but we can’t go charging in there in jeeps with guns blazing like you and Dhri were suggesting. If you really think, Mum, that telling the newspapers will help, and everyone agrees then that’s fine, we’re telling people because we can’t keep it quiet. That at least makes sense. But it’s going to be hell on Yajna, and I don’t think any of you have considered that. It’s all anyone will ever see when they look at her, that’s what anybody will remember, that she nearly got raped. How is she going to practice after this, with everyone letching at her? I know a lot of people know, but most of them were drunk, and there’s a difference anyway, in fifty people knowing, or however many people they tell even, that Dhrupad Panchal’s daughter got assaulted, and us telling the world.”

“So noted,” Hiru says, and looks around. “I’m hungry. Does anything deliver this far out?”

“Bhaiyya,” Parth says, desperate. “You see that this makes no sense, running off half-cocked like this. It’ll just harm our chances, and do nothing for Yajna’s reputation.”

“You’re right,” Ajaat says, and waves a dissuading hand at Pawan and Yajna. “He’s right, we’re all getting too angry, all that’ll accomplish is getting us into more trouble. No, we have to think this through when we’re all a little less excited and hung-over. You know,” he says and brushes the hair back from his eyes and essays a smile, “what they say about revenge.”

Parth gapes at him. "Bhaiyya."

"Your wife nearly got raped, as you keep reminding us," Babuji raps out. "I don't know much about modern young men, and I accept that I'm behind the times, but in my day we'd have done things that would make Dhri's plans sound like school children playing at chor-police. If you don't want violence, that suits me, I don't have enough men right now to devote to all-out feud. But when everyone will find out anyway, to back away and try to hide things, beta iye ek mard ko shobha nahiin deta."

The military does a lot of things, many of them good or good for the establishment Shakhar is smugly part of. But it takes boys, some of them as young as eight or ten, and spends the next decade teaching them to follow orders and another ten years or fifteen deploying them in situations where the chain of command is the breath of life. Two years is a long time, steeped in the infighting of politics, to find your own opinions and to hold ground, but ground breaking beneath your feet makes you long for something to hold on to, and even idealists after a certain age know when to concede, and Shekhar, well, he loves his country with a clear mind, and as close to a clear conscience as he thinks likely, but Parth was posted to the North-East for a not-insignificant fraction of his active service and idealism in that thin air does not have much life expectancy. He’ll give way if his concerns are real. If they aren’t Shekhar knows five places within an hour’s drive where he can dump a corpse. Pawan would probably help.

“We’re making this unnecessarily difficult,” Shyam, says, and goes to his knees in front of Parth, clasps his hands and gazes into his eyes. “Nobody is urging violence, though it might seem dear to our wrecked minds, but we cannot let it be thought that we are shrinking and afraid when the fault lies with them, when it is not Yajna’s character that is flawed, but that of those who assaulted her. Would you have us hold our tongues while Vasu Khateek gloats? Parth, think. Your wife has been dishonoured and it is your duty to her to do what lies within your power to assuage this and avenge her. Unless you think it lessens Yajna, to have been assaulted, or to have it known that she was assaulted, and it would do a favour to her honour to have other people whisper about it and to have those whispers breed, the path lies clear before you. Even if you find it difficult, you must walk it.”


End file.
